US Heats Up Russia Tensions With New Baltic Exercises

Not one American in 100,000 could tell you what BALTOPS is. Yet that regular, NATO military exercise held every year is stoking tensions with Russia that could lead to nuclear war.

BALTOPS is the largest multinational military exercise in the Baltic region and its professed intention is to deter Russia and demonstrate the military might of NATO.

Interestingly, traditionally neutral Finland no longer is so. The Finns have participated in BALTOPS since 1993.

One segment of the exercise will be held in the Syndalen training area on the southernmost Hanko peninsula, with Finland serving as host country. Also taking part will be the forces from the US, Britain, the Netherlands, traditionally neutral Sweden, Italy and Germany.

According to a NATO statement, the aim of the exercise is “to demonstrate the interoperability of NATO allies and partners and to assure nations of NATO’s commitment to the security and stability of the Baltic Sea region.”

In reality, BALTOPS in recent years, and especially this year, is doing precisely the opposite; Russia has overwhelming air power and tactical missile superiority in the Baltic region and none of the Eastern European armies can remotely match the Russian army unit for unit.

Therefore, all BALTOPS does is increase the fear among Russia’s military and political leaders that the United States and its European allies, urged on by the small Eastern European nations led by Poland who viscerally hate all things Russian, are determined to close their noose around Russia until the nation literally chokes.

For more than 40 years from the 1949 Washington Treaty to the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe at the end of the Cold War, NATO was the most successful defensive alliance the world had ever known.

But over the 25 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Alliance has become the opposite of its former self, an aggressive military alliance that relentlessly encourages and regime change and revolutionary upheaval across Eurasia and the Middle East.

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